Saturday, May 12, 2012

Star Trek Saturday!

ST:TOS Season 3 Episode 20
The portrayal of hippies in movies and on television is hilarious to me, whether it is contemporary, as this was, or retrospective, as in the movie I just saw today, Dark Shadows. These TOS hippies were played as willfully dismissive of anyone's point of view that didn't match their groovy mentality, a negative portrayal even while Spock sympathized with them. They were idiotic and self-destructive. Dark Shadow's hippies were naive, dumb stoners, a cardboard piece of historical comic relief. My favorite hippie portrayal might be from Stargate: SG-1's season two episode "1969," come to think of it: visually stereotypical, but sensitive for as little screen time as they got.

TOS wasn't always so judgmental of hippies. The season two episode "Assignment: Earth" has a smart and sympathetic hippie character, wearing the most eye-hurting combination of pink and orange ever assembled into one outfit.


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